Page 14 of Code Name: Phoenix

I’ve got her now.

She’s mine.The thought fills my head once again with a vengeance as I connect with her, and together we crash to the ground. I roll to minimize the damage as my mind starts to work overtime.

My life just got better, but my day just got a metric shit ton worse, and I need to get my shit together before everyone catches up to us.

I need to compose myself.

And Jessa?

Everything is raw and hitting me all at once.

This is Jessa—my Jessa. The life that was ripped away from me. After all of the searching, after accepting her death, after letting her go. She’s in my grasp. She’s alive, and she’s found.

But she’s Jay. Or, rather, “J.” Somewhere along the line, the letter turned into a name, but it doesn’t matter now.

Jessa is Jay, and she’s our target. It’s her face that matches the code name in that flimsy file lying on the floor of the SUV. She works with Zane, and she works for Maxwell. For the last decade, she’s been working for the monster I’ve been trying to put down.

But why?

She has to know he is most likely responsible for her own family’s death.

She’s been hiding all this time—from me—and her first instinct was to run.

Pressure builds behind my eyes as my anger swallows my relief. I don’t know which emotion to entertain at the moment.

So it will have to be indifference. For now.

As we shuffle to get up, her eyes lock on mine. She’s gone rigid. Her wide eyes refuse to leave mine, and I can tell by her reaction to me that everything I’m feeling is written all over my face.

She’s terrified.

She looks like she’s seen a ghost. But I’m the one who’s looking at a ghost.

Logan and a few members of our team meet us in the field with her friend in tow, and I move to place Jessa in Tex’s custody before I change my mind about letting her go.

Both of the women are quietly looking at each other. This is not how I pictured our reunion. I never thought we’d have a reunion.

Now, looking at Dee, I remember her as Dana. Her hair used to be much shorter, and she was heavier back then. She was Jessa’s best friend in high school. They were inseparable. Dana’s father had been incarcerated for murder before I started my undercover assignment, and it wasn’t just any murder.

Gossip was the favorite pastime at the high school, and when word got out that Dana was a cop-killer’s kid, she became everyone’s favorite subject, and her “friends” dropped like flies.

But not my Jessa. She doubled down. That’s who she was. It’s why I gravitated to her almost instantly.

I look over at Logan, who seems to be working out his own thoughts.

Things are different between us now.

He’s guarded.

I don’t blame him.

The only woman I’ve ever talked to him about is standing mere feet away from us, and she’s alive. I’ve shared everything about her with Logan in an effort to deal with my feelings and move past her loss. I opened up completely because I was finally convinced she was dead. After years of looking for her body, running her prints, checking alerts, and quietly following up on leads, I thought she was gone forever.

But she’s not.

She’s here.

And he knows everything.

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